(Reuters) – China’s agriculture ministry said on Monday that the highly pathogenic H5N6 avian flu had been found in wild birds in the northeastern province of Liaoning, marking the first confirmed cases of the strain in the country this year.
There were 291 wild birds at the site of the outbreak – a forest park in the provincial capital Shenyang – and 11 were killed by the disease, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs said in a statement.
The remaining 280 birds were culled as part of emergency response measures, it added.
The last H5N6 case in China reported by the ministry was on a poultry farm in the southwestern province of Sichuan in February 2020.
(Reporting by Tom Daly; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
